National Youth Authority to expand free range poultry

The National Youth Authority (NYA) has expanded its free range poultry project by buying 10,000 birds from the Tycriss Livestock Farms Limited to augment the existing ones.

Speaking to the media at the NYA poultry farm at Afienya Youth Leadership and Skills Training Institute on Tuesday, Mr Dzorkplenu Ede Zico, the Director of Agriculture at the NYA, said the project that started in 2011 was intended to create jobs for the youth.

He said the Authority had trained about 1,000 youth in free range poultry management and they would be given six-week-old birds at affordable prizes.

“We are therefore calling on all trainees to come and place orders for their birds and any youthful person interested in the project can also contact our offices at Kaneshie and Afienya for registration and training,” he said.

Mr Zico added that the project will soon be extended to other parts of the country.

Ras Mubarak, the National Coordinator of NYA, said the Authority had identified agriculture as one of the priority areas of the National Youth Policy to address the issue of youth unemployment.

According to him, it is necessary to build the capacity of the youth to discover wealth creating opportunities in agriculture and appealed to the youth to take advantage of the project and become job givers instead of job seekers.

Mr Mubarak appealed to Metropolitan, Municipal and District assemblies to support the unemployed youth in their areas to join the programme.